Displaying items by tag: Seratech
UK: Seratech has developed a process using olivine, a mineral abundant in Earth's mantle, to produce ‘carbon-negative’ cement. The company's method involves replacing some of the clinker with silica extracted from olivine. Magnesium sulphate derived from the olivine reacts with CO₂ to form nesquehonite, a mineral that sequesters CO₂. This method uses CO₂ captured from emissions sources or directly from the air.
Sam Draper, CEO, explained the process: “The researchers extracted these compounds by dissolving powdered olivine in sulphuric acid. After separating the silica and magnesium sulphate, they bubbled CO₂ through the magnesium slurry to form nesquehonite.”
According to Draper, replacing 35% of regular cement with this silica would yield carbon-neutral results, while a 40% substitution could achieve carbon negativity. Current building standards allow up to 55% of cement to be replaced by this material, although robust testing has yet to be conducted.
Seratech's carbon-neutral cement wins Obel Award 2022
10 October 2022UK: Denmark-based architecture fund Henrik Frode Obel Foundation has named Seratech as winner of its Obel Award 2022. The award recognises architectural contributions to global development. Seratech has developed an olivine-based composite cement produced using CO2 from flue emissions, which can sequester double the CO2 of ordinary Portland cement (OPC). When used as 40% of a blend with OPC, it is able to completely offset the emissions of concrete production.
Team member Barnaby Shanks said "The beauty of the idea is that you can just use it as normal concrete. There are other carbon-neutral materials, but they can be limiting because they can only be precast, cured in a lab in special conditions and shipped elsewhere. We want people to retain the freedom to use concrete the way that they are used to. We don’t want to limit people in any way because we’ll just lessen the amount of impact we can have."